Which documents cannot be signed electronically?

Even under eIDAS, some transactions are excluded from electronic form. In Germany these include termination of employment contracts under section 623 BGB and consumer guarantee declarations under section 766 BGB. In Austria, section 4(2) SVG excludes family and inheritance law transactions and consumer guarantees.

Anything requiring notarial recording or public certification is likewise outside the scope. The reason is the so-called warning function: signing by hand on paper is meant to make the parties conscious of the consequences — a function the legislator does not regard as equivalently fulfilled by electronic form.

The main exclusions at a glance:

• Termination of employment (DE): Section 623 BGB requires written form for terminations and termination agreements and expressly excludes electronic form.
• Consumer guarantees: Section 766 BGB in Germany and section 4(2) SVG in Austria exclude guarantee declarations given by consumers.
• Family and inheritance law (AT): Wills, marriage contracts and comparable transactions are excluded from electronic form in Austria.
• Notarial recording: Property purchase agreements, company formations and all transactions requiring notarisation remain outside electronic form.
• Public certification: Where an authority or notary must certify the authenticity of a signature, electronic form does not apply without special procedures.
• Ongoing change: The exclusion catalogues differ by country and are adjusted regularly through deregulation legislation. An annual review per jurisdiction is advisable.

How to build a reliable document matrix:

• Inventory document types: List every document type signed regularly and determine the applicable form requirement for each.
• Assign a signature level: Give each document type exactly one permitted level — SES, AES, QES or paper.
• Encode it in the template: Anchor the assignment technically in the document template rather than in a written instruction that gets overlooked in daily use.

With primesign ENTERPRISE, the permitted signature level can be anchored in the document template instead of in work instructions. Excluded document types then never enter an electronic signing workflow in the first place — form errors are prevented technically, not merely prohibited organisationally.